I'll Follow You
by totallybursar
Summary: Shakarian post ME3 Destroy XC songfic. Five chapters of angst, with a side of dark fluff. Currently rated for language, later chapters for adult themes.
1. love of mine

_This is a Shakarian post ME3 Destroy XC songfic. Five chapters of angst, with a side of dark fluff. _

* * *

**_Love of mine  
someday you will die  
but I'll be close behind  
I'll follow you into the dark_**

* * *

_**love of mine**_

Garrus Vakarian looked down at the object in his hands. A smooth, black block, about fifty centimeters long, embossed with ugly, graceless letters in stark white.

_CDR ZOE SHEPARD._

Alenko had just finished clipping another plaque to the stark black and white memorial.

_ADM DAVID ANDERSON._

Why was this so hard? He'd known - they'd _both_ known - that Shepard wasn't coming back this time.

A flash of memory - the look on Joker's face earlier as he'd added his block to the wall.

_EDI._

The AI's refusal to come back online, even as they'd slowly restored system after damaged system, had surprised them all. As far as anyone could tell - _anyone_ in this case being Tali and Specialist Traynor - EDI's processors were powered up and undamaged, but all of the AI's channels remained silent, her hijacked Cerberus body stiff and lifeless as a mannequin in a Presidium boutique.

No. Unlike Joker's unexpected loss, Garrus knew he'd said his final goodbye on the Normandy's loading ramp.

"_No matter what happens here," Shepard said, her voice cracking with emotion, "I love you, and I always will."_

"_Shepard, I…" he stared into those eyes, wishing he didn't know this was the end, "…I love you too."_

Why hadn't he stayed with her? At the time, he'd tried to tell himself it was logical, that he was badly injured and would only slow her down; would only be a source of weakness for her when she needed to be strong. But the simple answer was, she wouldn't let him. She'd ordered him back on the Normandy, and, as always, he'd obeyed his commander.

He'd never regretted following Shepard's orders until now.

The crew were all staring at him, he knew. And yet he still stood motionless with the plaque in his hands, unable to perform this simple gesture of closure. Beneath his feet, the Normandy pulsed with life - Alenko had told them all before the memorial service that the Normandy would be breaking atmo late this afternoon - but inside, Garrus felt as dead as the ship's AI.

_Damn it, Shepard, I don't know how to do this without you. I meant it when I said the universe would be an empty place without you._

He turned away from the wall, his mandibles working with grief.

Took two blind steps forward, his eyes still on the plaque in his hands.

Liara's hand touched his face, cool and gentle, her guileless blue eyes seeking his.

"Garrus?" she asked softly.

Wordlessly, he pressed the black metal into the asari's hand.

_I hope you're keeping a bar stool warm for me, because you won't be waiting long._

* * *

_Bioware owns MEness. Death Cab for Cutie owns I'll Follow You into the Dark. I own the angst.  
_


	2. our hands clasped so tight

_No blinding light  
or tunnels to gates of white  
just our hands clasped so tight  
waiting for the hint of a spark  
_

_If heaven and hell decide  
that they both are satisfied  
illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs  
_

_If there's no one beside you  
when your soul embarks  
then I'll follow you into the dark  
_

* * *

_**our hands clasped so tight**_

Garrus blinked fuzzily. Something was making one hell of a racket far too close to his ear.

As he lifted his head, he felt someone rudely shove him aside.

"Mr. Vakarian," a voice was saying, "I'm afraid you're going to have to leave."

Garrus blinked again. Humans in white coats surrounded him, the chair he'd fallen asleep in - again - and the bed his head had been pillowed on. The noise was coming from a console beside him.

"Mr. Vakarian!" Somebody was trying to remove his hand from where it belonged.

Garrus stood up. "No," he said firmly, coming fully awake. "What's going on? Why are the alarms going off?"

Whoever it was was still trying to pry his fingers apart, with little success.

"Mr. Vakarian," another voice said soothingly, "we're going to need you to step out of the room now."

Panic squeezed at Garrus's heart. "No," he repeated, forcing his way through the white coats to the edge of the bed. "I'm not leaving."

His eyes darted over the medical console as he willed himself to understand the scrolling lines of information.

"Somebody get this turian out of here!" shouted one of the humans. "If he won't let go of her hand, somebody cut his arm off!"

The soothing voice addressed him again. "Mr. Vakarian, you need to let go of her hand."

"No. What's going on?!"

"Commander Shepard is going into cardiac arrest."

* * *

In the month that followed the Normandy's departure from the crash site, Garrus had withdrawn as far into himself as it was possible to go. Before, when Shepard had died, he'd had Omega. Now, he had nothing.

At first, the only person to notice the dwindling supply of dextro-safe alcohol was Tali.

Small wonder. As the only other dextro on board, she had a vested interest in it.

She'd confronted Garrus in the main battery. It had been ugly. Things had been said that shouldn't have; in grief, in anger, in uncertainty.

Liara had also noticed. Again, small wonder. Although it wouldn't take the Shadow Broker to connect the dots, had anyone else been any less caught up in their own sense of loss.

Liara had been so… _nice_… about it. So understanding and sympathetic. Garrus had looked into her eyes and seen his own grief mirrored there.

He'd destroyed half the main battery before he was through.

After that, nobody bothered to open the battery doors.

They were two days out of the Sol system when Garrus finally lost consciousness, in a haze of alcohol and inanition. There had been no bright light, no tunnel beckoning him forward. Just the universe going black, as dark as his heart.

No. The light had come afterward, in the form of the painfully intense lamps over one of the Normandy's treatment beds.

"There he is," said a voice Garrus dimly recognized as belonging to Dr. Chakwas. It was followed by Karin Chakwas herself, bending over him, fussing with… something… connecting him to machines and IVs; pulling him back to life.

He snarled.

"It's good to see you, too," said a gentle voice, and Liara's face appeared on his other side, her small, cool hand taking his.

Garrus turned his face away. He couldn't bear to see the look in her eyes…

"Please look at me Garrus," she said, squeezing his hand lightly. "I have something important to tell you." There was a strange vibrancy in her voice. Almost against his will, Garrus felt himself turn toward the asari.

"Shepard is alive."

* * *

Garrus had spent the next twelve hours in the med bay, receiving fluids and glucose. He'd learned from Liara that Hackett had contacted her personally with Shepard's status as soon as the Normandy had been identified passing the outer planets of the Sol system. The Alliance brass - what tiny fraction of it remained - had decided to keep Shepard's survival a secret; even after three months, the commander remained in critical condition, in a deep coma, and they didn't want to face public outcry if it came down to a decision to withdraw life support.

Hackett had already denied two such requests from the medical staff. Medical resources were at a premium, and it was hard for some of the medical professionals to see so many of them poured into someone - no matter how heroic - who the odds said simply wouldn't survive.

But Hackett had a secret weapon.

"Miranda Lawson," Liara told Garrus. "She was badly injured, but survived. Hackett wasn't prepared to let Shepard go until Miranda had a chance to examine her."

"And?" Garrus had prompted.

"Miranda was transferred to Shepard's medical facility a little over a week ago. She believes Shepard can be saved."

"Does the crew know?" had been Garrus's next question.

"For now, only you and I and Doctor Chakwas," Liara had answered. "I felt it best if we didn't get anyone's hopes up before we were able to talk to Miranda ourselves."

"But it was okay to get _my_ hopes up," Garrus had grumbled, but only half-heartedly.

Liara raised a brow at him. "And if I hadn't, and you found out later that I'd known?"

Garrus snorted. "Joking, of course."

* * *

The first surprise was Miranda. The woman engineered by her father for genetic perfection was in a wheelchair, her long legs useless. Her lumbar spine had been crushed by falling debris that had held her pinned for nearly a week without food, water, or medical attention. Right now, there simply weren't the necessary resources to repair that kind of damage, and Miranda knew it.

The second surprise, of course, was Shepard, although Garrus was unsure just what he'd expected.

The commander was tall for a human woman, and life as a career soldier had built her body into a sleek, powerful fighting machine. The Reaper invasion had taken a toll on that machine even before Hammer's final assault, but now…

Shepard lay supine, eyes taped shut to retain their moisture, intubated to allow a machine to breathe for her, a gastric feeding tube in place to allow a machine give her sustenance, a thin probe through her skull to allow a machine to measure her brain activity and intercranial pressure, IV lines to allow machines to keep her hydrated, a pulse oximeter to allow a machine to gauge her saturation - everywhere machines, keeping her from rest, living for her.

Her skin was sallow, save where there were open scars - scars that Garrus knew once would have been a livid red from the implants beneath, and now were dark, like deep cracks in old porcelain - and, of course, the bruised-looking hollows beneath her sunken eyes. That strange, vibrant red hair Garrus had grown to love mostly gone; what remained looked dull and coarse. The form under the sheet and light blanket was painfully thin and wasted, patchworked with bandages and grafts and still held together in some places by rods and bolts.

It made Garrus want to scream.

Miranda, of course, was unperturbed by it all. Based on what he'd heard on Cronos Station, Garrus supposed she'd seen the commander far worse.

"The biggest problem is that her implants are all inoperative," Miranda told them. "In order to make Project Lazarus a success, we ended up having to resort to extensive biosynthetic fusion. Nearly a third of Shepard's body is, to some degree, cybernetic," she explained. "And none of it is working."

Miranda wheeled herself over to the foot of Shepard's hospital bed. "Of course, none of the staff here have any experience with this kind of tech," she went on. "I've asked Hackett to send me anyone with high-level bioengineering skills who might have been working on the Crucible project, but I'm still waiting."

"Okay, Miranda," Garrus had said flatly, "give it to me straight. What are Shepard's chances?"

"Of survival?" Miranda raised an eyebrow. "Good. Very good, now that I'm here. Of full recovery?" The former Cerberus operative shrugged. "The way things are now, it's anybody's guess."

Garrus understood. The relay system was in shambles, with nobody knowing how long it would take before repairs were complete and the system was back online. The Reapers had decimated manufacturing centers across the galaxy anyway, so even if the relays had been intact, rebuilding would have been slow. With only each system's resources to fall back on, at least in the short term, supplies of… _everything_… were strained.

Hackett - the de facto voice for humanity - and the handful of others who remained to lead the galaxy, believed that they could rebuild. But it was likely to be a long, slow, tedious process, and who knew whether the tentative alliances Shepard had beaten out of the fires of desperation would survive under perfect peacetime conditions, let alone the kinds of stresses the galaxy had ahead of it.

The necessities of food, clean water, shelter and basic medical supplies were what every race on every planet was focused on. Even such things as prosthetics were limited by the resource crunch.

No one was walking away from this war without scars. And for a hell of a lot of people, like Miranda, those scars would be crippling.

That was the reality. And what that would mean for one fragile, broken hero remained to be seen.

* * *

Miranda's bioengineers had finally arrived - three of them - and she'd put them to work with her usual crisp efficiency. By the end of their second week on Earth, Miranda had made enough progress that Liara had deemed it safe to let Tali, Joker, and Alenko in on their little secret.

Kaidan had wept openly. So had Tali, to judge by the sound of it. Joker had been equal parts relieved and irate, his frenzied limping enough that Chakwas had felt it necessary to give him a sedative lest he injure himself.

Garrus himself rarely left Shepard's bedside, his three large digits laced into her five small fingers. Although the medical staff assured him that Shepard probably couldn't hear him, he talked to her, read to her, told her jokes… anything to reach through the darkness. It would be terrible, he thought, for some part of her to be aware and to be trapped in a body that wouldn't respond.

Liara brought him food from the Normandy's stores, and Miranda saw to it that he wasn't hassled by the rest of the facility's staff. Other than that, he was left alone. Many nights, he never made it back to the Normandy, falling asleep with his head on the bed next to Shepard's shoulder, hoping that this time he'd awaken to Shepard's hand squeezing his.

He hadn't.

He'd woken up to an alarm, instead.

* * *

"I thought you said she would survive!" Garrus ranted. "You promised me she'd survive!"

Miranda wheeled herself quickly down the hallway, ignoring the looks the medical facility's staff were giving them.

"I said her chances were very good," she replied, her accent and concern making her words clipped. "Now calm down and let me do my job."

"Cardiac arrest, Miranda!" he shouted. "You don't _have_ a job any more."

One of the woman's hands snaked out and grabbed his forearm. "Calm down, Vakarian," she snapped, giving it a shake. "I am familiar with the term. I also know that Shepard went in to cardiac arrest on numerous occasions during her return to consciousness last time."

She gave him an exasperated look. "This may be a good thing, Garrus. But I won't know until you let me get to work."

And with that, she'd left him to the pitying (or worse) looks of the nursing staff.

Liara found him propping up the wall next to the door to Shepard's room.

"I came as soon as I got word," she said softly, laying a hand on his arm with her usual gentleness. "Have you gotten an update?"

"No." Garrus knew he was being short with Liara, and that the woman who had been such a friend to both he and Shepard didn't deserve it, but he couldn't help himself. His gut churned - it was like his chest was just one big knotted mess - and he'd already tried a half dozen times to get through the door.

The last time, Miranda had "offered" to sedate him if he didn't stay put.

"They're still in there, still working on her," Liara told him. "I'm sure they wouldn't do that if she… if she'd passed." There was a soft hitch in the asari's voice.

_Spirits, I'm such a selfish ass…_

Garrus exhaled loudly. "Liara," he said, turning to face her. "Look, I want to apologize. I…"

"Garrus," Liara halted him. "It's all right. I understand."

Garrus shook his head. "No, it isn't," he said firmly. "You love her too."

He swallowed, feeling his subharmonics waver. "I once accused Alenko of being blind to everyone else's grief when Shepard died over Alchera. Now I'm guilty of exactly the same thing."

Liara gave him a tiny, sad smile. "You're talking to the person who gave her corpse to _Cerberus_, of all people, knowing that they'd use her for their own purposes, because I simply couldn't let her go."

There were a few moments of silence between them. Not awkward, exactly, but apologetic and strained.

"Well, that didn't turn out all bad," Garrus said finally, with an attempt at lightness.

"Perhaps this won't, either."

The door beside them opened and disgorged a number of exhausted-looking humans, followed at last by a rapidly talking Miranda Lawson.

"Make sure that all monitors are synced to my omni-tool," were her final words before she pivoted her chair to face them.

Garrus couldn't find his voice. He wanted to believe, based on her words, that Shepard was alive, was okay, but he was afraid, _so afraid_ to ask.

"Is Shepard…" Liara managed timidly.

"Stable," said Miranda. "I believe the arrest was brought about by conflict between the respirator and Shepard's body when she began spontaneous breathing." She frowned. "It's not something that should normally occur, but Shepard is hardly a normal patient."

"_Miranda_," Garrus growled.

Liara squeezed his arm. "Has this… episode… changed Shepard's prognosis?"

Miranda looked surprised. "Of course not. Shepard is maintaining a percentage of her own respiration now. Her heart rate is excellent, as are her blood pressure and saturation. And her neural activity has increased by five and a quarter percent."

"So… this was a good thing?" Garrus finally managed.

Miranda raised a hand and tilted it slightly. "I would prefer it to have happened differently, but the results are… encouraging. It appears some of the implants may be reactivating."

"Goddess," breathed Liara. "That is excellent news."

"Indeed," said Miranda, with what Garrus felt was overly smug satisfaction. "Now we just wait and see."

* * *

_Wait and see_ turned out to be an understatement.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks stretched into a month. Under Miranda's care, Shepard was now breathing entirely on her own, and a number of her implants had indeed reactivated. Her neural activity continued to increase, but she showed no signs of a return to consciousness despite her progress.

Joker, Tali and Alenko had all been by to visit Shepard on occasion. Tali's first visit had led to an awkward and uncomfortable reconciliation between she and Garrus, and one of Alenko's visits had seen the turian doing something he'd never dreamed would ever be possible, or necessary: apologizing to the major.

Joker, though, turned out to be the real surprise. Garrus had returned from a bathroom break to find the pilot reading - and describing - some kind of illustrated screenplay or script (Joker had referred to it as a _comic_) to the comatose woman. In a strange restatement of Garrus's own feelings, Joker had said, "It would suck to be stuck inside your head with nothing to do but stare at the walls all day while the people in charge try to figure out what the fuck to do about you… Oh, _wait_, she's been through that already."

It had taken Garrus a minute to realize that the irascible pilot was referring to Shepard's incarceration on Earth prior to the invasion. But once he had, he felt it had a certain similarity to her current predicament. And he was touched by Joker's desire to entertain Shepard, in the slim chance that on some level she was aware of her surroundings.

After all, as soon as Joker left, Garrus returned to his place at her side, twined his fingers in hers, and picked up on the month-long one-sided conversation they'd been having.

* * *

Garrus had often dreamed of Shepard's awakening.

In some of the dreams, she awoke the way Garrus had loved to watch from his place beside her in bed - slowly, with a lot of adorably stupid human lip-smacking sounds and gentle snuffles.

In others, she would come awake all at once, those brilliant eyes opening suddenly to dart around the room the way she'd scan any unfamiliar location; assessing for threats, analyzing potential cover and escape routes…

But in most, it was just the squeeze of her fingers against his, the shape of his name on her lips.

The reality was a lot less romantic.

"Shepard! Can you hear me? If you can hear me, squeeze my fingers," Miranda instructed, her voice authoritative.

Shepard didn't respond. Her eyes, currently staring blankly up at the ceiling, blinked once.

"Shepard!"

Shepard's eyes had been open for two days now. The tape had been removed when she'd started to show repeated rapid eye movement and her neural activity began to hint at periods of sub-wakefulness.

At first those eyes had been hooded and glazed over, and although she blinked occasionally, it was clear there was no real consciousness there.

Then her eyes began to follow a light source. Brokenly, but also very definitely. And then movement of any sort that crossed her field of vision. But her gaze was then as it was now - blank, uninterested.

"Come on, Shepard! Squeeze my fingers."

Garrus had tried as well, ordering Shepard to do everything from looking at him to squeezing his hand to wiggling her toes. In private, he'd tried asking, cajoling, and even pleading with her to give him some sign that she was aware he was there, at her side, waiting for her.

But mostly, Shepard just blinked.

* * *

Shepard's return to full consciousness was agonizingly slow. She hovered in a strange limbo for another ten or fourteen days, occasionally responding to verbal commands to nod or blink or move her fingers but making no voluntary movement outside of the odd twitches that Miranda said were indicative of her nervous system coming back on line after a long hiatus.

Toward the end, Shepard finally began to move her eyes beyond simply tracking movement. Her eyes would roam the room, often lingering on the faces around her, but with no sign of recognition - either of the individual or of the fact that she was looking at a person and not the ceiling tiles. Joker had a human phrase for this that Garrus found uncomfortably appropriate - the lights were on, but no one was home.

Garrus consoled himself with the thought that Shepard was beginning to respond to commands with greater frequency and consistency.

Miranda, of course, remained completely undeterred by her patient's slow progress. She showed neither impatience nor excitement.

"It will happen as it happens," was her comment when pushed. "Shepard's progress is satisfactory."

_Satisfactory_. A word so far from the truth, as far as Garrus was concerned, as to be a barefaced lie. And yet… Shepard was alive. Her condition had been upgraded from _critical_ to _serious_. Her body was largely functioning on its own - she still retained her IVs and urinary catheter, but the gastric feeding tube had been replaced by a smaller nasal tube, and Miranda was confident that even that would soon be unnecessary if Shepard continued to respond to commands.

And, uncomfortable as it was to think so, at least the lights were _on_.

* * *

"Five-nine-two-three-alpha-charlie-two-eight-two-six."

Of all the things Garrus had hoped to hear from Shepard's lips, he was not prepared for the sounds that emerged.

"Five-nine-two-three-alpha-charlie-two-eight-two-six."

Liara,on the other hand, was ecstatic.

"_Goddess_…" she breathed. "It's… Shepard's ID. She's reciting her military ID!"

Garrus remained stoically impassive.

"Don't you see, Garrus? It means that Shepard's memory is intact - or at least partly intact! She remembers her ID, and that it's an appropriate response under duress!"

"She's not under duress, Liara," Garrus rumbled.

"She may not be fully aware of her surroundings yet," Liara explained. "Lacking full consciousness or clarity, she's responding with her military ID, just as she was trained to do!"

"_Garrus_ would be better," he responded, worry coloring his subvocals.

"Five-nine-two-three-alpha-charlie-two-eight-two-six."

Garrus patted her arm. "Yes, Shepard," he told her gently. "We know."

And finally, after days and weeks and months of dreaming it, those five ridiculous little fingers tightened around his, and she squeezed his hand.

* * *

_A/N: Apologies to any the medical professionals out there. I am not one, and I did no research whatsoever in writing Shepard's return to consciousness. Any and all errors, therefore, are due entirely to my ignorance._


End file.
